The present invention relates generally to a system for awarding prizes to members of an incentive program, such as a casino slot club, and more particularly, to a system for utilizing the membership card for such an incentive program as a prepaid phone calling card to award and redeem points to a member in the form of prepaid time for a telecommunications service.
Slot machines, such as video poker, reel machines, video keno or video blackjack devices (hereinafter, collectively referred to as "slot machines"), are an important source of income for the gaming industry. Despite the fact that the odds generally favor the casino, players still play slot machines in large numbers, in hopes of hitting a large jackpot, as well as for their entertainment value.
Each slot machine is designed to ensure that, on average, the casino retains a predetermined percentage of the total amount gambled (the house advantage or "vigorish"). In fact, slot machines generally have a higher house advantage than the table games of blackjack, poker or craps. Thus, the more these slot machines are played, the greater the revenue to the casino.
Accordingly, casinos constantly search for marketing strategies and programs to appeal to players and to distinguish their slot machines from competitors in the industry. For example, as an added incentive to play their slot machines, many casinos offer "slot club" programs to reward slot machine players. Each player in a slot club is generally issued a player tracking card encoded with the players' tracking identifier. The casino awards "player reward points" for the player as he plays slot machines in that casino. The "player reward points" can generally be redeemed for merchandise or services at the casino hotel.
In many cases, however, the incentive provided by conventional slot club programs may not be sufficient to attract new players or to retain existing casino players at slot machines. With conventional slot club programs, for example, the player reward points must typically be exchanged for merchandise and services at the casino hotel. Thus, once the player has left the casino, the player has limited options for redeeming the points in a convenient manner.
In addition, although it would be desirable for casinos to give a small, immediate and affordable reward to a player for his continued play, conventional slot machines can only pay out an integral numbers of coins. Thus, a small reward of a fractional amount of less than one coin is impractical with conventional systems. If a casino could cost-effectively provide an award to players every time the player pulls the handle, the slot machine may be advantageously promoted as providing a "win for every spin."
It is well known for vendors to sell prepaid calling cards for telephone calls at a fixed or standard rate. Such prepaid calling cards may allow, for example, the caller to call anywhere in the United States at any time of the day for a rate of 16 cents per minute, with a correspondingly higher rate charged for international calls. In addition, "rechargeable" prepaid calling cards are known which may be recharged by purchasing additional time, generally in blocks of minutes. Since the prepaid calling card is merely a pointer to an account maintained by the vendor, the card itself is not necessarily required to make a telephone call. There are no known prepaid calling cards, however, which allow minutes to be accumulated as an incentive award for the use of a particular service.
One casino slot card club offers a separate "giveaway" prepaid calling card, having a predefined value, as an incentive to join the club. However, this additional card simply acts as a standard prepaid calling card, and does not function as a slot card. Once the prepaid calling time is used up, the prepaid calling card cannot be refreshed by slot usage. Moreover, none of the known slot cards permit the accumulated bonus points to be redeemed for free phone time.